By Bill Capo
NEW ORLEANS - Residents of a Lakeview neighborhood said they have been trying to get a streetlight fixed for nearly four years.
"We find it very dangerous, particularly for our guests leaving late at night. You know, sometimes they leave after dark, and we're telling out guests be careful," said Monica Wallace, a Lakeview resident.
At night, only moonlight and the lights from houses provide the dimmest illumination in this area. Just to see the burned out streetlight in the darkness, we had to use the light on our camera, and for residents, this leads to concerns about safety.
"It's very dark, and actually we have had a little bit of crime hiding in this darkness," said Ray Broussard.
"We actually had a hit and run incident directly under the tree," said Tara Guillot.
"We've called it in a bunch of times, and I got to say they've been responsive. They've come out here and changed that bulb maybe 50 times, and we keep telling them it is not the light bulb."
But as they planned a neighborhood block party to emphasize safety, their concerns about the broken streetlight climaxed.
"We are so fed up. We're having a block party for national Night Out for Crime, and we're so fed up that we are actually going to duct tape work lights halfway up the pole as high as we can get up on a ladder," said Guillot.
The residents say the light bulb changing crews tied these two ribbons around the pole to warn future crews not to bother changing light bulbs since that is obviously not the problem.
"Then we went ahead and took a look at what work our crews were doing, and have gone ahead and scheduled the first part of the wiring repair, which is actually putting in an emptyconduit, and that we expect to take place Monday morning," said Robert Mendoza, director of Public Works.
Once a new underground pipe is in place, then a wiring crew makes the connections.
"We'll see if we can get them out there on Tuesday. Once you have the conduit in place, it doesn't take that long to rewire it up, and so we hopefully will have some lights up Tuesday night," said Mendoza.
"It would help me greatly, it would help me feel like I am safer," said Guillot.
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